Origin of the Buddha Image

Title:

Origin of the Buddha Image

Author:

Anand, Mulk Raj

Publication:

Marg

Enumeration:

Vol. 15 Issue no. 2; March 1962, p. 7-14

Abstract:

Literary references indicate that images of the Buddha were indigenously made, and popular, centuries before the arrival of Greco-Roman craftsmen in Gandhara. Later, many Greeks accepted Buddhism, and there grew a Greco-Roman Indian style of Buddhist portrait sculpture in Gandhara. In these sculptures, the Buddha appeared like a Greek hero god -- modelled on Apollo and other Greek gods and heroes -- and two distinct types of portraits came to be differentiated: the Gandhara portrait of Buddha as a man, and the Mathura transformations of Buddha the man as god. The Greco-Roman-Indian features were continued in the Parthian-Indian phase, but the Western features were gradually subordinated to the Indian style. The Gupta Mathura images of the Buddha were completely idealized symbolic forms.